Final Words

Despite Haswell's arrival on the desktop, AMD is in no trouble at all from a graphics perspective. At the high end, Richland maintains a 17 - 50% GPU performance advantage (~30% on average) over Intel's HD 4600 (Haswell GT2). All things equal, even Trinity is good enough to maintain this performance advantage - a clear downside of Intel not bringing its Iris or Iris Pro graphics to any socketed desktop parts.

While there isn't a substantial increase in GPU performance between Richland and Trinity, AMD's GPU performance lead over Ivy Bridge was big enough to withstand Haswell's arrival. Note that although we're comparing performance to Haswell here, Richland exists in a lower price bracket. If you want the best desktop solution with processor graphics, AMD remains your best bet.

Later this year we'll see the arrival of Kaveri, which will be AMD's true response to Iris as well as its first HSA enabled APU. For as long as I can remember, integrated graphics was one of the most frustrating aspects of PC hardware to test. It looks like that's finally about to change.

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102 Comments

"Richland maintains a 17 - 50% GPU performance advantage (~30% on average) over Intel's HD 4600 (Haswell GT2)"And yet consumes more then 2x the power according to your own charts.And what about the CPU performance? These are desktop parts not laptop parts, their iGPU performance is meaninglessReply

Did you skip just to the conclusion? The reason as to a lack of CPU benchmarks is on the first page.

How much power would a 4770K with a GT640 use, incidentally? And at the other end of the scale, what about that 4600M which is rated at 35W yet in a couple of tests beat even the 4770K with its HD 4600? You're asking for results that Anand hasn't managed to grab just yet for reasons as stated on the first page.

There's some strange results in here. In the 3DMark: Fire Strike Extreme test, all three APUs have the same result, but in 3DMark06, the 6800K significantly beats everything else. However, regardless of one or two oddities, the 6800K isn't a real progression over the 5800K... but it was never really made out nor expected to be.Reply

Who cares about power on the desktop? What are you running, a server farm? We're not talking about a 200W part here. The Richland is easy enough to cool as it is. Just because intel based its strategy around a mobile part doesn't mean we have to run behind absolute power/performance ratios. Price/performance makes more sense for the average user.

Also, iGPU is very important at that price point. If a $150 CPU saves you a $80 GPU, it's quite attractive. USA readers probably can afford to spend $200 for a dGPU, but struggling european economies and the developing world are a big part of the international market.Reply

Well I think this also shows how close mobile will be. Gt2 at slightly lower speeds than the 4770k (say 1200 mhz 3MB cache for an i5/i3 vs 1300 mhz 8MB cache for 4770k) will be about 10-15% slower. Mobile trinity is going to be approximately equal to haswell mobile gt2 and richland may be slightly ahead but the gap is largely gone. Reply

I have always wondered why would anyone paying $330 for a high-end CPU care for a barely adequate iGPU. It's much more reasonable to expect that people looking at the $150 price point will appreciate an iGPU, especially one that is quite decent. The cheapest GT640 I could find was ~$85 (local price), which is no small change. And don't think that the GT640 will get the same scores if paired with the i3...Reply

The vast majority of these CPUs do not go to gamers... Their performance is more than acceptable for a large number of use cases if an OEM doesn't want to include a dGPU. However for $330 you get CPU performance that AMD cannot touch at ANY price point or performance/watt..Reply